The GOP gubernatorial field has been an embarassment of riches so far, for a good conservative.\u00a0 Tom Emmer, Dave Hann and Pat Anderson are all good orthodox conservatives; Marty Seifert is more of a pragmatist but certainly acceptable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But with the 800-pound gorilla rumors that Norm Coleman is pretty likely to enter the race, some of the air got sucked out of the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And Pat Anderson, who served as State Auditor from 2002 to 2006 (and a very, very good one at that) has decided to run for her old office.<\/p>\n
Good for her, I say.<\/p>\n
Coleman – so says at least one thread of conventional wisdom – is going to get into the race, likely lose the endorsement but go to the primaries, and have an excellent chance of winning the governor’s office against the pack of gabbling hamsters the DFL will field.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coleman is not the perfect conservative, but if the choice is between an imperfect conservatve (who’s voted to the right of John McCain and Jim Ramstad, for crying out loud) and Steve Kelley, Mark Dayton or Margaret Anderson Kelliher (especially since the MNGOP is unlikely to flip the House and\/or the Senate this fall, not that that’s not going to stop me from trying like hell), the choice should be obvious, if that’s what it comes down to; I am hoping that the presence of strong conservatives Emmer and Hann will drive him to the right, one way or the other.\u00a0 That’s presuming we all believe the conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n
But this is about Pat Anderson.\u00a0 She’s young.\u00a0 She articulates a conservative vision in a way that reaches out to people in the middle who might be sticker-shocked by the DFL’s coke-binge-like spending spree.\u00a0 She’s very <\/em>sharp.\u00a0 She’s also been out of the public eye since the drearily unaccomplished Rebecca Otto upset her for Auditor during the 2006 election.\u00a0 I think four years in the public eye will set Anderson up nicely for whatever comes next.<\/p>\n I first predicted in 2002 that Pat Anderson would be Minnesota’s first female governor or Senator.\u00a0<\/p>\n I’ll amend it; she’s got a great shot at being Minnesota’s first female governor or good <\/em>female Senator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The GOP gubernatorial field has been an embarassment of riches so far, for a good conservative.\u00a0 Tom Emmer, Dave Hann and Pat Anderson are all good orthodox conservatives; Marty Seifert is more of a pragmatist but certainly acceptable.\u00a0 But with the 800-pound gorilla rumors that Norm Coleman is pretty likely to enter the race, some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,2,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-10","category-minnesota-politics","category-mngop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7801"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7803,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7801\/revisions\/7803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}